Two women called Moll on Covey


The 1817 slave register for John Tharp's Covey estate lists seven individuals whose mother's name was given as Moll: Ned (b. 1782), Alexander Williams (b. 1785), Careful (f)  (b. 1789), Chartena (b. 1791), William Grant aka Tommy (b. 1791), Zabrow (f) b. 1795) and Sandy (m) (b. 1799).

There were two women called Moll on the estate, one born in 1767 and one in 1768 to Salinda (see 'Salinda of Covey'). Because they were close in age, it's impossible to determine which woman was the mother of which child.*

Alexander Williams, Careful and William Grant aka Tommy were described as Sambo, suggesting that their father or fathers were of mixed African and European ancestry.


Going down a generation, later returns from the estate record the birth of three girls to a mother called Chastina or Chastena: Jenny Doman (b. 1817), Milly Doman (b. 1820) and Sophia Doman (b. 1824). 

Chastena could only have been Moll's daughter Chartena, but the extract from the 1817 register shows clearly that in that record the fourth letter of her name is an r, as in Charity, the name above, rather than an s, as in Christiana, two names down. Even so, it is more likely that this record is wrong than that the three records of her daughters' births are consistently incorrect.


* Note that this wasn't the purpose of the document: it had only to distinguish the children from their namesakes, so that Moll's Ned and Jenny's Ned were kept distinct from one another.


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